Dee’s eyes widened further. “I didn’t kill him, either. That blade was carbon steel, forged in the traditional style. I don’t think there are more than a few dozen like it in the world today. He knew what it was worth.”
Prophetess’ mouth rounded into a silent exclamation. “You… you gave him your sword?”
“No, giving him my sword would have been stupid. I traded him my sword for furs, oilskins, rations, boots, and the rest of this.” I gestured at the pile.
Prophetess jumped up and threw her arms around me. “Thank you, Minos!”
Did that make it worthwhile? Right at that moment, with her head on my shoulder and her soft hair against my cheek, it did. “Well, that sword wouldn’t do us much good against Yoshana if we can’t reach her. Besides, somehow I don’t think I can beat her in a stand-up fight no matter what sword I’m carrying.”
We ate and rested well that evening and Prophetess found a church that offered mass. We left early the next day. The sun had come out, and much of the water had evaporated or oozed into the soil. But what was left had turned into a hard crust of ice and frost, for the air had turned colder still. Our breath misted in front of us, and we were glad for our new winter gear. It still seemed a good trade for the sword, and I could put aside the twinge of having traded away my only valuable possession, my legacy from my parents. In any case, that’s what I told myself.
“I’m going to miss that place,” Loris said. “Best food I’ve had in a long time.”
Which, unfortunately, was true. Supper had allegedly been a lamb stew, which had seemed more like fatty mutton than lamb. Breakfast had been a sort of runny oatmeal with pieces of very old apple in it. And yet, it had in fact been the best we’d eaten in weeks. And would almost certainly be the best we’d have for weeks to come.
I’d never expected to have such fond memories of Thassa’s cooking back in the Hole.
“Well, will you look at that,” Loris added, poking my shoulder. I’d never cared for being prodded, but I had to take the familiarity as a good sign. So far, the three friends had regarded me with an uncomfortable mixture of fear, disgust, and grudging respect. A willingness to touch me was a step forward.
I followed Loris’ pointing finger. We were leaving through the town’s northern gate, but over the walls to the south we could clearly see a great metal cross, two hundred feet high, rising into the air. The huge monument must have been hidden from us by the previous day’s rain - or we had simply missed it, numbed as we were from the cold.
“That’s got to be a good sign for the journey,” Loris said.
I had never quite understood why a means of torturing people to death was supposed to be reassuring, but I kept my mouth shut and nodded my head.
Our host had assured us that if we’d gone east, we would have found towns, or at least inns, an easy day’s walk apart. Heading north we would have none of that. But the wooden shelters continued. The next day it began to snow, scattered flakes at first, and then a heavy fall of the stuff. But it was far less penetrating than the rain, and our new clothes turned it well. It didn’t last long, though the sky turned a gray so relentlessly dull that it seemed the sun must have vanished forever.
“Fimbulwinter,” Dee muttered. When I looked at him he explained, “The twilight of the gods in Norse mythology. At the end of the world the sun dies and the earth is plunged into endless winter before the final armageddon.”
“That’s not a Christian belief.”
He grinned so widely I could see his chapped lips crack. “The task of the scholar is to find the elements of truth in everything. The Norse gods were simple barbaric superstition, not at all like our Prophetess’ doctrine.” He chuckled, although I didn’t see the humor in what he said next. “But it hardly seems implausible that the world will perish in cold and Darkness, now does it?”
Three days and another snowstorm later, the road led us past the edge of a deserted city of some size. It was surprisingly intact. There was no shortage of shelter, but as the gray light began to fade, Hadal pointed out a faint glow to the east.
“What’s that?”
The light reflected from the smothering clouds, pale but white and steady, not like the flickering red glow of firelight.
“Let’s find out,” Dee said eagerly.
“Let’s not,” I retorted. “This place is dead. Whatever’s making that light, I’m not sure it’s anything we want to meet.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure, Minos?” Dee repeated.
“I’m pretty sure it froze and fell off in that rainstorm. Why don’t you go back and look for it?”
Prophetess smiled tolerantly at our bickering. “Let’s go see what it is. Carefully.”
There’s an unearthly, lifeless silence when the ground is covered in snow. There were no birds, no animals, no gentle rush of blowing leaves or grass. Sometimes the wind came whistling up, scattering icy crystals through the air, but otherwise a total stillness prevailed. Except the crunching of our boots, and Dee’s insistence on trying to start a conversation every five minutes. Each time I poked him with my stick.
As part of the exchange for my blade, I had gotten a five foot hickory staff from the outfitter - good, tough wood, but if it came to a fight, it was no sword. Still, the stick was over a foot longer than my sword had been, which was an advantage for poking loudmouthed occultists.
As we neared the center of town, the buildings became grander and better preserved. It was strange that none of it had been stripped. There were only a handful of the great towers that formed the core of Acceptance or Oldtown, but there were many large structures of brick and stone, decorated with carving that as much as declared, “We built this for the ages.”
Unfortunately, there had come a time when the ages didn’t care anymore.
We had been following what must have been a street, although the carpet of snow made it impossible to be sure. Our path ended in a row of buildings. Giant, leafless trees filled the spaces between them. The light was brighter here, its source clearly nearby.
“You’re sure about this?” I hissed to Prophetess. She considered a moment and nodded.
The bare trunks of the trees gave some cover as we made our way between buildings. Beyond it we peered out into an open rectangle, lightly wooded, and framed on all sides by more structures. It stretched perhaps a hundred yards across and a quarter mile long. The light rose from a point south of the rectangle, obscured by a large, domed building at its end.
“What do you suppose this place was?” Prophetess asked.
I shrugged. “Parade ground, maybe? This could have been some kind of military complex.”
Dee favored me with a little smirk but, amazingly, held his peace.
We moved south in the shadow of the buildings, finding what cover we could behind trees and columned porticos. I glared nervously at the gaping windows whose glass had long ago been shattered. I saw no footprints of anything larger than a rabbit in the snow, but who knew what might lair in those abandoned places?
As we crept past the domed structure, Dee suddenly bounded forward and pointed. “Look!”
“You idiot,” I growled, and stumbled after him, my feet breaking through crusts of ice and catching in the loose snow beneath.
Then I stopped and stared. A raised platform stood in front of us, dotted with posts. Each post held a single globe that shone the purest white. Some few were dead, the globes crushed or black, but most produced the steady glow we had seen reflected from miles away. Crystals swirled around them in the wind, gleaming in the misty light.
It was breathtakingly beautiful.
“I thought so,” Dee cried triumphantly. “This was one of the ancients’ great centers of learning. One of the world’s greatest libraries lies below us, marked by the eternal light of truth.”
“I don’t know about eternal,” Loris said. “Some of them lights have burned out.”
Dee’s face fell. “Yes they have.”
We sheltered in
the lee of the domed building for the night. Despite the cold and wind, no one was much inclined to go in. Dee complained bitterly that the wisdom of the ages was rotting away beneath our feet, but even he acknowledged the risks involved in exploring.
“We don’t have time to do it carefully, John,” I told him. My next remark was needlessly cruel - but I made it anyway. “Of course, you’re welcome to stay behind and explore. Or try to find your way into it tonight.”
The look he gave me was so reproachful that I added, “If we survive what’s coming, we can return together. And if we don’t, Prophetess says the world’s going to end anyway.”
Prophetess must not have approved of my tone, because she said waspishly, “The Lord told me I must confront Yoshana to save the world. He didn’t tell me we have to survive.”
There wasn’t much to say to that, so I wrapped myself in my furs and went to sleep.
Dee assured us that not only did he know where we were but, if we walked due north, we would meet up with the main road again. To my great surprise, he was right.
“Strange that nothing got looted in the city,” I said. “It should be worthwhile even for people from Opportunity to salvage here, if there’s no town closer.”
“They’re afraid,” Dee said. “They say the Darkness was created in this very place, centuries ago.”
I had never seen anyone’s mouth literally fall open in shock. I realized mine had. I glared at the occultist. “And you didn’t think it might be a good idea to tell us before we spent the night here?”
“If I’d told you, you wouldn’t have spent the night,” he replied with a tranquil smile.
The next days passed in a white haze. The land was flat as a tabletop, and the wind howled across it. Every night there was a shelter, and then there was more snow. What fallen wood we could find was not dry enough to catch fire. We refilled our water skins with snow, and it melted next to our bodies. We were all well past tired of the tough, chewy pemmican that made up our rations, but there was no other food to be found. Once we spied a small pack of gaunt wolves that looked hungrier than we were. Our two parties traded suspicious glares and went our separate ways.
The road turned sharply east at a giant pit in the ground. Dee said it was a mine of some sort. If it was, the scale dwarfed the Flow - if we clawed at the Last Days’ garbage for a hundred years, we would never dig so deep.
The occultist said the place had been abandoned because we were within miles of the ice sheets themselves. I was completely prepared to believe him. The wind from the north was biting. Our clothing continued to prove its worth, but every inch of exposed skin stung, and had to be covered periodically lest it become numb and frostbitten. I could feel ice forming on the hairs inside my nose when I breathed.
I had lost track of the days by the time we saw smoke. Once again, Hadal was the first to point it out. “What do you suppose it’s from?”
“Who cares? It’s going to be warm.” If it turned out to be Yoshana’s legions roasting their enemies, and they intended to use us as logs on the fire, at that moment I wouldn’t have complained.
The smoke proved to be rising, not from the flames of war, but from the chimney of a small, stone farmhouse standing alone. I would have said nothing could keep us from stopping and knocking at that door, except that as we approached, gold winked in the distance beyond. By the time we reached the house, the light had resolved into a dome, flanked by spires, all rising above a vast curtain wall.
“Is that…?” Prophetess breathed.
“Our Lady,” Dee nodded.
We lurched into a staggering trot that brought us, gasping and exhausted, to the foot of the stone wall. It reared thirty feet into the air, the road leading to a huge, ornately carved gate that seemed too massive to move. Around it spread houses and small shops, wisps of smoke rising from most. But we had eyes only for the portal in front of us.
“Umm…” said Loris, “How do we get in?”
“Knock?” I suggested.
No one moved. Even Prophetess seemed overawed.
“Oh, fine. I’ll do it.” Why shouldn’t a manifestation of the Fall demand admittance to the Universal Church’s citadel?
On closer inspection, a much smaller door was set into the great gate, with a simple, iron ring mounted on the dark, deeply carved wood. I rapped with it, then, unimpressed with the sound, rapped harder.
Nothing happened.
“Nobody home?” I suggested.
I took another look at the door. Next to it hung a chain, vanishing into the very top of the wall above the gate. Well… it probably wouldn’t bring boiling oil down on my head if I pulled on it. So I tried.
A bell clanged, deep and loud, shocking in the winter stillness. I took a step back. “Well, that should get their attention,” I muttered nervously.
Within a minute a small, wooden panel at the level of my face slid aside. The eyes staring out at us were protected by an iron grate set into the other side of the door.
“We open for trade at Sext,” came a man’s voice. “You can stay in the town until then.”
Dee stepped smoothly in front of me. “We are not traders, but pilgrims.”
The doorman seemed taken aback. “At this time of year? Are you mad?”
“He said we were pilgrims. He never said we were smart,” I grumbled.
Somewhat to my surprise, the man laughed, and noisily shot a pair of massive bolts securing the door. We stepped inside in single file, Dee taking the lead. “Four men, a woman and a Select knocked at the gates of Our Lady one freezing day,” the doorman said. “That’s either a bad joke or one hell of a story.”
I thought about pointing out that the Select was a man too, but I was inside the wall, and I preferred to stay that way. It seemed wiser to let the comment pass.
This side of the wall was worth staying on. A small patch of fields and orchards, snow-covered now, nestled inside the northwest corner of the wall. Straight ahead, a road wound between two small lakes. Beyond the town spread in a wondrous vista, all cream-colored brick and peaked roofs. It was smaller than the great cities like Acceptance or Oldtown, but infinitely more substantial than a village like Brambledge. The buildings most resembled the dead town where we had seen the eternal lights, but this placed lived. Smoke rose from the chimneys, and even at a distance we could see fur-bundled figures shuffling between buildings. The road led directly to the golden-domed edifice we had seen from a distance, a steepled church rising next to it.
I was not the only one gawking, and the guard was enjoying it. He smiled broadly and said, “It’s something, isn’t it? Even living here my whole life I don’t get tired of looking at it. Guess it must be even more impressive if you’re coming from the back of beyond.”
I bristled a bit - I had seen towers that overtopped these by hundreds of feet, passed through cities where all of Our Lady would have been swallowed up like a single stand of trees in a forest. But he wasn’t wrong.
“It’s something,” I agreed.
Prophetess made the sign of the cross on her chest and bowed her head.
“Well, we don’t get pilgrims this time of year, but guess I’d best take you to the rectory and let them get you squared away.”
And with that he led us down the road past a squat building that had the look of a barracks. I heard a horse whinny from the far side - so a stable as well. No other guards appeared, though, and our escort carried no visible weapons at all.
Dee began to ask him this and that, all manner of questions about the town, and the man happily chattered away. Apparently we had just missed the turning of the fall leaves, which in his opinion was a sight unparalleled in the known world; as well as the fall apples, which were the finest food known to man. I began to wonder whether he was a guard or a tour guide.
A black iron fence ten feet high and topped with spikes encircled the inner compound, so perhaps the people of Our Lady were not so trusting after all. I wondered aloud why the outer wall extended so far
beyond the buildings, which must make it harder to defend.
The guard’s eyes narrowed a bit, then he smiled again. “You Select, always ready for a fight, eh? No secret to it, I suppose. Having the lakes, and some fields and orchards, all inside the wall gives us food and water if we’re besieged. The greater part of the town’s outside the wall to the south, but those folks can always take refuge inside if there’s an attack. Hasn’t happened in my time, though it did in my father’s.” He crossed himself. “God willing I won’t see it, nor my children either.”
Prophetess and I exchanged glances. Yoshana’s legions would be passing a hundred miles south of here, seeking to conquer the whole of the Source. War might come to this beautiful place far too soon. I looked at the iron fence. Posts as thick as my wrist were spaced ideally for defenders to thrust spears between them. Attackers would face plunging fire from the buildings beyond. And the thirty foot stone outer wall would not yield easily. The Universal Church had given thought to war as well as peace. But I doubted they’d reckoned with Yoshana and the Darkness.
A small guardhouse stood inside the ornately wrought gate at the end of the road. A man emerged, wrapped in black furs. Only the plumed steel helm on his head identified him as a guard. A pike leaned against the guardhouse wall, but he made no move to take it.
“By God it’s cold out here, Allem,” he protested. “What have you got that’s dragging me away from my fire?”
“Ah, quit your bellyaching, Tolf,” retorted our guide good-humoredly. “I had to walk ’em in from the outer gate and you don’t see me complaining.”
“Yeah, but you kept yourself warm running your mouth the whole time, or I’m a Select.” He ran his eyes over my face. “Oh, look, you’ve got a Select. Wherever did you find one of those?”
“Fished him out of the lake, didn’t I? They’re pilgrims, you silly bastard.”
There followed some debate over who was a bastard, and by whom, and who had been sleeping with whose mother, sister, grandmother, and sheep. It seemed wildly inappropriate for the citadel of the Church. I turned to Prophetess, expecting to find her face burning, but she just wore a tolerant smile.
Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle Page 16